The study was conducted to examine the relationship between hypermnesia (spontaneous recovery of previously unretrievable information without access to retrieval cues) for concrete and abstract words and creative thinking abilities in two groups of 30 undergraduates each. Ss were asked either to form an image or to construct a meaningful sentence for each stimulus word presented. The words were either highly imageable or difficult to image. A forced recall procedure was used over three successive trials. Tests of creative thinking were administered during the interim periods. In both groups, more high-imagery words were recalled, and hypermnesia for easily imaged words was higher than for abstract words. Ss who exhibited the imagery-hypermnesia effect performed higher on the creativity tests than did those who failed to achieve this effect, adding support for a relationship between imagery and creativity. The hypermnesia effect occurred even though the mind was consciously occupied with other tasks. (Author)